


Every Time She Goes

by anneapocalypse



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-12
Updated: 2012-11-12
Packaged: 2017-11-18 12:49:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/561240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneapocalypse/pseuds/anneapocalypse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something about the way Leonard looks at her every time she goes makes Allison uneasy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Time She Goes

Every time she goes, he looks at her like it might be the last time he sees her.

And there’s a part of Allison that doesn’t know what to do with that, and so she folds it up and stores it in a quiet corner of herself until she can figure it out.

It’s not the camera he’s always pulling out, or the way he keeps pulling her in to kiss her face. It’s just something in his eyes when he lowers the camera, when he pulls away from her, lips parting with a hesitance Leonard  _never_  has, like he… like he doesn’t know  _what_  to say. Leonard at a loss for words, now  _there’s_ something you don’t see every day. And normally she’d shoot off something about that, about his trap always running and hell, he’d spit something similar right back and it wouldn’t be a lie because that’s them, mouthy as all hell and unleashing the brunt of it right on each other.

And yet it’s that very  _thing_  in his eyes - she wishes she could put her finger on what it is, exactly - that makes every smartass remark, all the jabs she’d usually throw at him without qualm, die in her throat.

 _Don’t_ , she wants to say.  _Stop_.

_Stop looking at me like that._

"Don’t say good-bye, okay?" she says instead. "I hate good-byes."

Because Allison’s not naive, she knows what it means, every time she goes, what it means to be a Marine and maybe that’s what separates them, why she hates these elaborate departures with the camera and the kisses and the looks. Leonard kissing her one two three more times across her temples isn’t going to affect the odds of her coming back one way or the other and the pretense is grating, at times.

Almost as if he thinks he can  _keep_  her. Keep her safe, that is, but also, as if he could hold her here, keep her from going…

That sure makes her uneasy. 

They accept certain things about each other - how Leonard is never more himself than when he’s buried under datapads in his lab, how Allison lives for lacing up her combat boots and braiding her blonde hair tightly back and shouldering her rifle.

And there was a time she thought they were okay like that, two lives moving side-by-side and it worked.

But something chafes in the way he grabs her arm one more time, brushes one more kiss over her nose. And one more and one more, even as she pulls away, says, "I have to go. You’re gonna make me late."

His eyes cut her and she flashes her widest smile, something for him to film, hold, cling to. Something that both is and isn’t her.

But the way he looks at her says it’s not enough, not quite, and a spark of anger stirs inside her even as she smiles, because this is what she is, this is all she has to give and  _fuck him_  that it’s not enough, and what she says next, she doesn’t mean to say. It’s just not a thing she says, and why she says it now she’ll never know, because for all the sarcastic or spiteful things they’ve spit at each other over the years, Allison doesn’t do lies, or trite reassurances that could easily turn into lies. So when she hears herself say, with a roll of her eyes,  "Don’t  _worry_ , you’ll see me again," her chest tightens with a wrongness she hasn’t felt on any previous departure.

But she doesn’t have time for this.

So she swallows it, folds it away into a quiet corner of herself to sort out later, gives him one last smile and a wave and before he can kiss or cling again, she goes.


End file.
